Angermeyer, Philipp S.Ejiaso, Vivian Kaosisochukwu2025-10-032025-10-032025https://hdl.handle.net/10315/43159Suicide notes offer a window into the emotional, psychological and social worlds of suicide note writers. Initial linguistic studies on suicide notes have focused on analysing the genuineness of written suicide notes against fabricated or simulated ones (see e.g. Tan 2011, Harris et al. 2024). These studies on suicide notes approached their investigation from a forensic perspective where the findings could be used as evidence in court to make claims about authorship. However, more recent studies on suicide notes have transcended only studying for the authenticity to analysing intricacies about the lives of suicide note writers (e.g. Sanni 2021, 2022, 2024; Tanusy 2022). Some studies connect their findings to the general social practices that exist where the suicide decedents originated or lived (Sanni, 2021). The study of suicide notes exists in Nigeria. Researchers including Ugwu and Nnamani (2022), Nnorom (2019), and Sanni (2021), for example, have contributed to the linguistic enquiries on suicide notes in Nigeria. Nigeria is a patriarchal society that enables male dominance and women’s subjugation or relegation to the background (see for example Airaoje et al. 2023; Ejiaso 2024; Santaemilia and Maruenda 2014). The Nigerian society is a place where gender roles, ideologies and expectations are deeply rooted in cultural and political frameworks. Thus, suicide notes by women can reveal not only the personal despair but also the weight of gendered or social ideologies they bore. This current study explores linguistic features in Nigerian women’s suicide notes to investigate how Nigerian women who died by suicide (or even survived suicide1.) represent themselves and others in their notes, as well as represent the gendered or social expectations including ideologies. By examining these final messages or notes, this current study seeks to unravel how ideologies of family duty, social and gender expectations are pronounced, projected or resisted.enCritical discourse analysisSuicide notesNigerian womenGender ideologySocial media studiesResearch Paper